


We Can Take the Long Way

by missmichellebelle



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Famous, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, M/M, Musician Ian, Musicians, Roadie Mickey, Slow Burn, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-13
Updated: 2014-11-13
Packaged: 2018-02-25 06:29:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2611790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmichellebelle/pseuds/missmichellebelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s the first time Mickey’s spending the night after they’ve hooked up, but as he watches Ian carefully strum his guitar, he knows it won’t be the last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Can Take the Long Way

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mickandsleepyface](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mickandsleepyface/gifts).



> written for [gallavicher](http://gallavicher.tumblr.com/) over on tumblr as a part of the **Gallavich Gift Exchange 2014** , with the prompt:
> 
> _I would love an AU where Ian is a famous singer and Mickey is a roadie_
> 
> of course, writing Ian as a musician means I needed to make him sing, and because I am no song writer, I used an already existing song ~~that I was obsessed with at the time and that inspired me to write this the way I wrote it~~
> 
> hopefully this is at least close to what they wanted uwu <3

The hotel hallway is thankfully empty as Mickey walks down it in nothing but his boxers and a t-shirt, but that’s not all that surprising. It’s nearly three in the morning after all, and while people say a lot about musicians being crazy partiers, they must be talking about the ones Mickey doesn’t fucking work for. Not that Mickey gives a shit—he’s never exactly been a partier, and getting back to his room without answering questions in the middle of the night would be a lot fucking harder if people were having ragers all the time.

The light from the hallway slits into his hotel room as he slips through the door, and he hears one of the guys he’s rooming with that night groan.

“Where the fuck were you?” He mutters from one of the beds, and Mickey clenches his teeth.

“You know how the princess is about his fucking guitar. Apparently if he can’t sleep because his precious baby sounds sharp, I don’t get to sleep either,” Mickey growls, and the third guy in the room mumbles a _shut the fuck up_ into a pillow.

Which is when Mickey realizes that both the beds are occupied.

“You fucking kidding me?” Mickey growls, not caring if he wakes either of them up any further.

“You snooze you lose,” the first guy says, and then chuckles sleepily. “Or you don’t snooze and then you don’t get to snooze and you lose and I don’t know what the fuck I’m saying anymore, good night.”

Mickey glares at the lump under the comforter as it falls silent, as if that’ll fucking change the fact that he has to either sleep on the sofa or the floor, and like _fuck_ is he doing that. He chews the side of his lip, curses to himself, and stalks back into the hallway, slamming the door loudly behind himself. He hopes he pulls those fuckers straight out of REM.

He stalks back down the hall, walking as quick as he can so that his head can’t quite catch up with where he’s going or what he’s planning. He’s actually tired enough that it works, right until he’s knocking on another hotel door and he can hear the sounds of disoriented movement on the other side. That’s when Mickey finally realizes what he’s doing, and he hisses a _shit_ and thinks about turning around, figuring something else out, when the door opens.

“Mickey?” Ian asks, eyebrows pinched together, and he glances around the hallway like Mickey didn’t think to do. “What are you—“

“Those dicks I got stuck in a room with took both the beds,” Mickey replies, pushing past Ian and into the much larger and grander room than the one he was put up in. “Like fuck am I sleeping on that ratty ass couch.”

“I thought you didn’t do the whole sleeping over after thing,” Ian comments, voice bemused and not in the least bit tired. The door clicks softly behind him, and Mickey stills as he feels fingers slide beneath his shirt and rest over his hipbones.

“This ain’t exactly after, Gallagher,” Mickey growls, and then his breath hitches as Ian’s teeth graze the skin of his neck and he fucking hates himself for it. “Are you fucking serious? _Again?_ We already went twice.”

Ian hums, and then pulls his mouth back. “Wasn’t it three? Or does me sucking your dick not count anymore?”

“Don’t recall coming down your throat, so yeah, doesn’t count,” Mickey huffs, tipping his head to the side as Ian starts to suck on his neck again.

“Well, that can be fixed,” Ian says into his skin, and Mickey manages the strength to pull away from the redhead, putting some distance between them.

“Nah, man, I’m fucking wiped,” Mickey insists, and Ian’s lips tip up in a salacious grin, like he’s so fucking pleased with himself. “Fuck you, all right. I had a long day, longer one tomorrow. Speaking of, don’t you have a fucking show? You should be asleep.” It’s not concern for Ian, fuck that, but for the gig. If Ian’s band fucks up, Mickey’s out of a job that he actually kind of likes and that pays pretty fucking well.

“Not tired,” Ian insists, and then his finger is hooking in the band of Mickey’s boxers suggestively. “So…”

“So I’m going the fuck to sleep,” Mickey snaps, pulling out of Ian’s reach and then flopping onto the ridiculously large bed. It’s shit, really, the way the crew gets shoved into tiny rooms with two queen beds and each of the fucking band members gets their own like, suite, or some shit. Ian pouts at him for a few moments, and then sighs heavily, apparently accepting the fact that he won’t be seducing Mickey anymore that night.

This thing, what they have, has been going on for the better part of a year. Maybe longer. Mickey isn’t always the best with dates. It probably feels like longer, maybe because the sexual tension between him and Ian has been there pretty much since the day they met… Which was actually a pathetically decent amount of time after Mickey started working for the guy.

It had been a gig Mandy had set him up with. One of those friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend deals. Mickey had just been getting on his feet, pretty much still supporting himself on drug money and the cash he got from pawning stolen goods, and Mandy basically presented him an infrequent job that would pay him a decent amount. All he had to do was lug fucking musical equipment around for some up-and-coming indie band that Mandy raved about and that Mickey had, frankly, never heard of.

That had been about three years ago, and now Destination Unknown’s music is on fucking radio stations and they’re headlining their own minuscule tour. But it’s still a fucking tour, nationwide, that requires busing from state-to-state and hotel rooms and shit, and Mickey is along for the ride. Because somewhere in that first year, the single instrument tech they had on crew had started teaching a few of them their trade.

Turns out Mickey is a better guitar tech. At least, that’s what he’d originally assumed, seeing as the first time Ian had handed Mickey his guitar had been the first time they properly met, and even though Mickey hadn’t tuned his guitar for real even once yet, Ian had asked him to be his personal guitar tech, and well… That’s a fucking salaried job. Something stable. Something that requires Mickey to follow the band, or, to be more precise, _Ian_ , wherever the fuck the music takes him. He has an apartment back in Chicago he still pays rent for, even though he only sees it probably a total of three or four months out of the year.

But it didn’t take long for Mickey to figure out that Ian offering him the job had less to do with Mickey’s skill and more to do with how he wanted to get into Mickey’s pants, which… Which had actually been a bit surprising. Yeah, Ian was the fucking openly gay guitarist of an indie pop (they call themselves rock, but it’s _fucking pop_ and if Mickey wasn’t paid to listen to it, he never would) band, and Mickey had seen gay boys and men alike practically throw themselves at him. But where Destination Unknown was unlike any other semi-famous band the way movies and media portrayed them, Ian was even more-so.

He didn’t do the drugs. He didn’t do the hooking up with groupies. Shit, Mickey had hardly seen the ginger so much as do more than a shot or two. It wasn’t until halfway through year two when Mickey found out that, while Ian might be openly gay, he was not-so-openly bipolar, or so a very drunk Willow had told him with very little prompting (Willow being the lead singer and keyboardist, whose name is actually some shit like _Joan_ and who had fought long and hard to have a band name that included the word _origami_ , or so Ian tells him).

Ian strums his guitar, jolting Mickey from the near-sleep state he’d been in, and he growls into his pillow.

“Fucking seriously, Red?” Mickey flips his head on the pillow until he can glare properly at Ian, who is sitting in nothing but a pair of boxer briefs with his acoustic guitar resting on his thigh. It’s hotter than it should be. Then again, with how fucking annoying Ian is in general, _he’s_ hotter than he has any right to be.

Ian glances over at him, raises his eyebrows, and says, “You know I like to write songs in the middle of the night.” Some shit about how the sleepier he is, the more creative he feels. Ian turns his attention back to his guitar, face relaxed as he strums a few more chords. “If it bothers you, you could just go sleep in your own room.”

Mickey can see the fucking smirk even with Ian’s head tilted down, and he grumbles and presses the pillow around his head.

For about sixty seconds, before he let’s it drop and then rests his cheek on his folded arms, heavy eyes watching Ian as he works.

It was a cat-and-mouse game since the moment Ian introduced himself, and Mickey decided to keep his distance. Because where Ian was openly gay and all rainbows and equality and unicorns and shit, Mickey was… Not. He just was _not_. And he had no intention of being. There are a million and one guys for Ian to choose from, and he decided to waste his time on fucking Mickey, and sooner or later he was going to realize that.

But a year later, and he hadn’t relented. Not even a footstep. And Mickey had got in his face about it, told him to back the fuck off, that if he wanted to fire Mickey just to fucking do it, that Ian had his pick of the fucking litter so why didn’t he pick some other guy to annoy the shit out of.

Ian had said he was stubborn, and then he had kissed him, and now here they are.

There are rules. Rules that Ian never breaks, but he pushes at the edges, trying to find cracks to slip through or loopholes that Mickey didn’t think of. No, Mickey is the one who breaks the rules, every single time. And once the rule is broken, they never find their way back to it.

It’s the first time Mickey’s spending the night after they’ve hooked up, but as he watches Ian carefully strum his guitar, he knows it won’t be the last.

“What are you working on?” Mickey asks after a few more minutes, when he doesn’t recognize the melody that Ian is playing. It’s kind of his job, to know what Ian’s guitar is supposed to sound like in each and every one of their songs. Mickey is _painfully_ , intimately acquainted with Destination Unknown’s music, much to his dismay.

Ian looks over at him, seeming surprised that Mickey isn’t asleep, and then gives a self conscious little shrug.

“Something new,” he answers offhandedly, like it’s no big deal, even though he knows Mickey never treats Ian writing music like it’s something astonishing or deserving of a ticker tape parade.

It is beautiful, though, in a way that Mickey has come to appreciate in the same way he’s come to appreciate the finesse behind tuning a guitar. Ian is quiet in his songwriting, unlike Willow, who acts humble but needs the feedback of every living soul within a hundred mile radius to assure her that what she’s come up with is _genius_. Not that Ian doesn’t need validation, but he doesn’t go looking for it. If it finds him, it finds him.

A lot of the time, especially lately, it finds him through Mickey. Through his barely-there acknowledgements, like a tiny nod or a simple, “sounds good, man.”

Without further prompting, Ian falls back to the beginning of the song, and jumps in to start singing softly—lyrics that he’s just now finding the music too, or words that are filling in around the melody he found first. Mickey’s never quite sure which way it goes for him.

“ _[Long drive, long night, the best night of my life](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sECAEAqshz0)._ ” Ian’s not good at making eye contact when he sings. Mickey’s heard Willow bitch at him more times than not about how it helps connect them with the audience, and Ian just promises her that he’ll try and work on it and then… Doesn’t. Mickey kind of likes the way that Ian’s eyes almost look closed as he sings, focusing on the chords his fingers don’t quite know yet rather than who might be listening.

His hand hesitates, and Mickey sees Ian chew his lip, before he slowly and unsurely keeps going.“ _With you, riding, your hand on my hand._ ” Ian’s eyes flick up, lock with Mickey’s for a moment, and god fucking dammit.

This is not happening.

This is not fucking happening.

And it’s like Ian can sense the way Mickey’s muscles tense even from across the room, and his glance falls away again.“The… _The thought of arriving_.” Ian scrunches his nose, goes back and starts the line again, changing one of the notes and singing it slightly differently. “ _The thought of arriving… Kind of feels like dying._ ”

That’s when the hesitance seems to fall away, the nerves giving way to the weight of the music as Ian gets into it, and it’s so fucking funny to Mickey how _visual_ it all is. The way Ian’s entire posture seems to shift, as if he finds his confidence again, remembers how to use it to make him stand tall, remembers that making music is something he enjoys and that he’s _good_ at. Mickey’s smiling before he can help himself.

“ _I don’t want to go home and be alone. Could we stay out? Could you—_ “ The melody shifts, and Ian looks at Mickey again, and Mickey becomes aware of the fact that he’s still stupidly smiling because Ian smiles back at him. “ _—Drive a little slow? Don’t matter where we’re going, as long as I’m with you…_ ” Ian plucks a few more strings, lets the last one resonate, and sings,“ _We can take the long way_.”

Mickey wonders if there’ll be more, but the music fades from the room and leaves them both in silence, Ian’s musical bravado fading into something a lot more vulnerable and unsure as he taps his fingers against the top of his guitar and chews his lip, waiting for Mickey to say something and not quite to the point where he’ll ask the questions himself.

“Shit,” is what falls from Mickey’s lips, but it’s not the adjective so much as the awed expletive. It’s not the first time Mickey’s heard Ian play solo this way, but it never fails to kind of derail Mickey in how different it is. Not to be cliché as fuck, but it’s more _raw_. More jarring.

Ian takes it for what it is, and smiles all coy and unsure and _humble_ , and Mickey doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to line this Ian up with the smug, cocky, smart ass little shit he sees so fucking often.

“I’m still messing around with it.” Ian fingers one of the strings absentmindedly, and Mickey makes a mental note to check it in the morning before soundcheck. “Don’t really have a chorus or anything, although I’ve been playing with a melody that might work for it, maybe for the bridge. Not sure yet.”

“Hey,” Mickey interjects, because he can tell by now when Ian starts spiraling into one of his nonsensical rambles that has him talking in circles, and Ian glances up at him. “Get some fucking sleep, all right? You fuck up on stage tomorrow, and I’m out of a job.”

Ian smiles softly at him, and Mickey’s a little surprised when he doesn’t protest this time. Instead, he leans his guitar against the wall and crawls into bed beside Mickey, collapsing on the mattress right beside him.

“Bed the size of Texas, and you gotta lay right there?” Mickey grumbles.

“Yep,” Ian replies simply, turning his head to grin that shit-eating grin of his, the little boy side of him settled against the wall with his guitar, apparently. Mickey rolls his eyes and flips so that his back is to Ian, but can still feel the warmth radiating off Ian’s shoulder and arm through the thin material of his t-shirt.

“What’s your opinion on cuddling?” Ian asks, and a second later there’s a click and the room is pitched into darkness.

“Nonexistent,” Mickey responds, voice getting heavy with his exhaustion. “As in, I don’t fucking do it.”

“Oh.” It doesn’t sound disappointed, just flat, like Mickey had made some sort of mundane comment. It’s actually kind of fucking weird—Ian doesn’t normally just let shit slide.

Which is why it shouldn’t be surprising at all when his arm slings over Mickey, tugging him closer until Ian’s exhales are brushing gently over the skin on the back of Mickey’s neck.

“What did I just fucking say?” Mickey snaps, but he doesn’t have the energy to wiggle away from the ginger’s grasp.

Or, so he tells himself.

And Ian doesn’t say anything. Over the sound of the air conditioning, he’s humming softly—humming the same melody he just played for Mickey, and Mickey can still hear Ian’s soft, gentle voice caressing over the words.

 _As long as I’m with you… We can take the long way_.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Song:** "Long Drive" by Jason Mraz
> 
>  
> 
> [Read, Reblog, & Like on Tumblr](http://missmichellebelle.tumblr.com/post/102542476025/we-can-take-the-long-way)


End file.
